[MUD-Dev] Designing Virtual Worlds

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

From: Richard A. Bartle [mailto:richard at mud.co.uk]

> OK, my book is now out, for those of you interested in such
> things. Amazon.com has it (along with scans of 97 sample pages) at
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0131018167/ .

> I've but up a supporting web site, mainly featuring a
> bibliography, at http://mud.co.uk/dvw/index.html .

Picked it up in New York last week. It was still steaming it was so
hot off the press!

Just finished the Jessica Mulligan book whilst on vacation too. Has
anyone else read that, and what are their thoughts?

  Developing Online Games: An Insider's Guide by Jessica Mulligan,
  Bridgette Patrovsky,

  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1592730000

I found it informative, although its mostly uncommon common
sense. From memory, the main topics discussed are :

  - properly managed development processes.

  - effective CRM (especially management of customer expectations).

  - evaluation of feature set vs. player types (Bartle types
  vs. feature set).

  - evaluation of game lifetime periods and how customer usage
  changes (tied into previous point).

  - effective planning for project management.

  - support staff estimates.

If you are looking for technical info on server or game system
design, this isn't the book. It does have a lot of information which
strikes me as useful for larger scale operations. I don't think the
average mud admin would gain much though unless they wanted to go
commercial. In fact, if you have a commercial software development
background and are used to processes and controls, a lot of this
book will be ideas you are already familiar with.

One of their suggestions is that a game needs to be feature complete
before entering public beta. Given that I've yet to see a game
_launch_ with the full initial feature set or balanced skills, their
recommendation seems spectacularly ivory tower unless one had no
commercial pressures.

There are also a few articles in the back that many of you will have
already read online. I haven't seen the article by the AO designer
before though, and it made interesting if slightly sad reading. I
didn't agree with all of his conclusions about the effectiveness of
auto generated missions and equipment. Furthermore, there was an
amusing summary of M59s history by Damian Schubert (of this list).

Dan

P.s. Richard, will you autograph my copy? ;)
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